All the buttons listed below are the easiest way around Live Writer and if you look through it for five minutes you will know your way around. If you want anything though the menu at the top of the screen works like a traditional menu and everything is contained within it. It is important to note that everything in those traditional menus are now available from the buttons listed below. With the exception of the Help menu, which lists Live Writer’s own little information pieces on its traditional menu. This design is a fantastic step forward as it gives ease of access and is smart design to hamper the user less by getting rid of as much clutter as possible.
The Top Toolbar
Incredibly simple to understand when you take a quick second.
Publish the post to the internet. Sends the current post to your blog.
New – a new post.
Open, opens a post.
Save Draft saves your post without publishing it so you can work on it further before putting it online. It is important to note that automatically this will be saved to your computer and not your website, if you click the down button you may select to send it to your website instead as a draft.
The paint brush simply changes the colour of the program in a very subtle way, too subtle for it to even bother being there in my opinion.
The help button again is a bit of a flaw as it does send you to a help page, but this is online; not the best if your internet is down for whatever reason.
The last button is to select from a drop down list which blog you wish to work on.
The Simple Text Functions
Are just above the screen such as you would expect from Microsoft Word like bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, font, justify (right, left, centre and justified,) number and bullet.
Then there are the quote buttons, split post, hyperlink, insert picture, insert table, the undo, the clipboard and the general insert button.
The quotes form a quote around an object, something that is used to search for online – keep this in mind. Its better to format your quotes with this button than just using simple quotation marks.
The split post button splits the post in two or three parts. This is best used for users who are regular bloggers.
The hyperlink function is great. Its your best friend. Hyperlinks are how popularity is recorded and how important a blog is these days. So remember to hyperlink all relevant items in your post. When you select the button you type in the web address you wish to be sent to and what text you wish to see in the screen. The auto-link function works to automatically link that piece of text every time you type it to that web address. Another way of accessing hyperlinks is to select the word you want to link to a website and right click it. That is what I normally do. Write out my piece and go back over it right-clicking and adding in the links after.
Tables are a great way of editing and keeping your text nice and tight. Keep it in mind in future, for example contact information. The table button has all the simple functions you need in a table, this will be more familiar to be used to using word processing.
Undo is a great button in any program.
The Heading / Paragraph button is a simple selector of html fonts. In the early days of html there were seven sizes of text Header 1 – 6 and paragraph. Simply choose these to edit your text size. It use to be the case that search engines would focus more so on headers and it is good to use them if you plan to layout your posts with subheadings but otherwise just don’t worry about it.
The clipboard drop menu has all the simple functions of a clipboard, cut, paste, copy and paste special.
The insert menu allows you place a hyperlink, photo, photo album, table, maps, tags and video.
Tags are little codes used to say what your post is about, this is what search engines use to find your post. Good accurate tags get your post found.
The maps are supplied by Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and very simple to use, right click to place a push pin.
The Right Bar
Also known as the task pane and it can be turned off by pressing F9 button or clicking in the view traditional menu and selecting the Taskpane. This is handy for when you edit your photos and little bits like this because your simple options menus appear here. The regular view is listed below.
You have the blog name under which is the view blog button which will launch your blog in your default browser. This is a good way to look through your blog to actually see what you have put up already.
Beneath this is your open function where you can browse your drafts, and then beneath your recent posts with a more folder to view more of your posts.
Beneath this is the Insert function – with all the options laid out I find these easier to choose from, if you find a plug-in online you can insert more abilities and it will turn up here.
The Bottom Selections
The view tabs: Edit, which is primarily a screen to type in and edit your piece, it gives you a view of your blog with the content within it; the preview function shows you the final layout of your post as far as you have made it; the source tab shows you the html of that post you have created.
Below this is the categories menu, where if you have it selected on you blog you can quickly post to which category your post gets placed, the drop down menu shows what categories are on your blog and the refresh icon redownloads the categories from your blog.
Beside this is the publish date button which is as it says when your blog will be published, if you do not click this it will be posted immediately, if you set the date by clicking on the icon you can change the date and hour which when you press publish your blog post will be put to the internet.
In the bottom left corner is whether it is already posted or a draft and when it was last saved; in the bottom right is the name of the blog that you are currently working in.
